Hydraulic spool valves are crucial components of hydraulic systems. Solid pollution particles mixed in hydraulic oil could result erosion wear of the valve orifice, then lead to a decrease in the performance of valves. Most studies focused on analyzing the influencing factors and mechanism of erosion wear, while a few considered its evolution, which is the basis for predicting orifice throttling coefficient. According to the variation of orifice throttling coefficient, compensating control could be applied to the hydraulic valves to improve its control performance, and the service life of the spool could also be predicted. In this study, an orifice erosion rate model using finite element analysis (FEA) simulation was firstly established based on the E/CRC erosion model, which mainly consisted of two easily obtainable parameters in hydraulic systems: spool opening and pressure difference. The orifice throttling coefficient prediction model was further established by combining orifice erosion rate model and worn profile model, which model could predict the throttling coefficient and output flow of hydraulic spool valves in real time. The erosion experiments were carried out, and the worn morphologies of orifice positions were also characterized and analyzed, the results showed that the model could accurately predict the orifice erosion rate and the orifice throttling coefficient, the maximum relative error between the prediction model and the experimental measurements is 9.11%. The findings of this study ensure the accurate prediction of the impact of erosion wear and provide guidance for improving the control performance of hydraulic valves.
Li et al. (Thu,) studied this question.